Not Quite Perfect

‘Emma, darrrrling. I hear we got the booook – haauuuw splendid,’ she rasps sounding like the snake from The Jungle Book.

‘Thank you,’ says Emma smiling. Jacqui looks perturbed that she has mistaken her comment for congratulations.

‘We-ell, if yoou’ll excuuse me, I’m just orff to see Jooel.’

‘Oh lovely, I’ll come with you,’ says Emma. Jacqui frowns but says nothing.

Joel’s office is the size of a broom cupboard, but he does have an impressive view over the roofs and occasional spire of central London. Pictures of every kind of motivational speaker and business guru, whose flesh Joel has pressed, hang on his walls. His favourite is the one of Alan Sugar pointing accusingly out of its frame signed with the words ‘You’re bloody fired, Joel mate’. As Jacqui walks in his face lights up and then falls as he sees Emma behind her.

‘Jacqui. Emma.’ The two names are uttered in tones relative to his feelings for each of them.

‘Hi, Joel. I just wanted to check that you’d heard the good news? About Richard?’ asks Emma, grinning shamelessly.

Joel’s face remains fixed in a smile, but his eyes betray panic.

‘Oh, didn’t Digby tell you?’ says Emma without mercy. ‘We got it. Isn’t that fantastic?’

‘Congratulations, Emma. You must be delighted. I suppose Jacqui and I will have to do our best to market the unmarketable, eh?’

Emma is almost impressed by this neat left hook, but nothing can dampen her mood today. ‘I’m sure you will, Joel. See you later,’ she says, skipping back down the corridor like a schoolgirl who’s just got one over on the mean kids.

Diana Darcy looks at herself in the mirror and is satisfied. Despite the onset of grand-motherhood and the advent of her sixties, she senses that she is still a good-looking woman. Her mother taught her that to dress well is to live well, and it is a sentiment she carries with her still. Sometimes, when she is shopping in town or out with the children in the park, she notices the fat people, the unkempt, the careless and their appearance disgusts her.

‘Mum, don’t be such a snob!’ Rachel hisses as her mother wrinkles her nose at another overweight child in a tracksuit getting wedged at the top of a slide.

‘Rachel, dear, it’s just indicative of our society. I read about it in the paper. Overweight mothers breed overweight children. It’s tragic really.’

Diana pats her hair, fixes a bracelet onto her wrist and dabs a little of her perfume behind each ear. She checks her appearance once more, smoothing her skirt and removing a hair from her black cashmere jumper.

‘Ah, my vision, my life.’ Edward appears at the door, bowing in a mock-romantic gesture.

‘You old fool,’ laughs Diana fondly. ‘Right, I’m going to meet daughter number one and those recalcitrant children for coffee. What are your plans?’

‘Oh don’t worry about me. The Telegraph crossword beckons. Do we have any Kit Kats?’

‘No. No chocolate for you, not with your cholesterol,’ she scolds him like a mother with a sixty-two-year-old toddler.

‘Very good ma’am. Anything else ma’am?’

‘Yes. You can stop being cheeky and maybe put in those bulbs? It’s a glorious day. Much too nice to be sitting indoors.’

‘All right, my darling. Have a wonderful time. Send them all my love.’

The phone rings and Diana answers with impatience. ‘Hello?’

‘Diana, darling. It’s Rosie. Are you well? Good, good,’ she continues without waiting for Diana to answer.

‘Rosie, I’m just off out to meet Rachel.’

‘Of course, you run along, darling. I wanted to speak to Teddy anyway.’

Diana balks at Rosie’s use of this name. It’s a vestige of the past, of Edward’s university days, before he knew Diana. She hands the phone to Edward. He looks nonplussed and holds the phone to his ear.

‘Oh Rosie, it’s you. How the devil are you?’

Diana feels suddenly invisible as Edward is lost in conversation with one of his oldest friends. She knows it’s ridiculous to feel jealous after nearly forty years of marriage, two children and three grandchildren, but somehow Rosie can provoke this feeling. She has tried to bond with her, but all the time she has this nagging sense that Edward should have married her instead. Rosie has it all; the brains, the career in Fleet Street, the contacts. She’s the mother the girls might have preferred; the one who can get them the jobs, the restaurant bookings and, even now, she’s wooing the grandchildren with trips to the Cbeebies studio and tickets to film premieres. Diana should be grateful and magnanimous, but she feels churlish and undermined.

She rallies herself now, pecking her husband on the cheek, mouthing ‘Be good,’ and sweeping out of the door without a backward glance.

She loves driving into town, finding a parking space and having a potter around the shops before she meets Rachel, who is always late.

‘I’ve got three children to manage, Mother. You’re just one person,’ Rachel observed when her mother brought it up.

‘Rachel, darling, you were never on time before you had the children.’ This is true and Diana was quite pleased by her quick-witted observation, which had made Rachel laugh.

She pulls into the car park situated behind a budget supermarket branch, which Diana can’t bring herself to use. Rachel laughs at her mother’s superciliousness, but Diana knows she is right. She doesn’t expect everywhere to be as nice as Waitrose, but she knows that they keep the lighting dim so people can’t see what they’re buying. Also, the entrance hall smells of urine, which to her mind can never be conducive to a happy shopping experience.

Diana finds a space by the exit. She is just placing a ticket on her windscreen when she hears two squeaky voices: ‘Granny, Granny, Granny!’ Diana turns at the cacophony of excited greetings to see Lily and Alfie waving frantically from their pushchair as a weary-looking Rachel plods across the car park towards her.

‘Rachel, you’re on time,’ she says with a wry smile.

Rachel rolls her eyes. ‘And good morning to you too, Mother.’

‘Just my little joke,’ trills Diana dismissively. She has never found smalltalk easy, particularly with Rachel, who often seems so quick to take offence. ‘Now who wants some cake?’

‘Meeeeee!’ chorus Alfie and Lily with glee.

They reach the coffee shop and Diana leads the children to a table, while Rachel places their order. Alfie and Lily scramble onto the furniture and Diana sinks into an armchair blinking at the sunshine, which is filtering in through the window. She looks over at her daughter and notices how tired she is looking. Her shoulders are hunched, as if she’s doing battle with life, not like the cocky teenager who used to give her so much trouble.

‘Here we are.’ Rachel puts down the tray with care just as Alfie kicks the table spilling milk from the too-full cups.

‘Alfie!’ shouts Rachel with more force than she intends. Two middle-aged women look over unimpressed.

‘It’s all right. There’s no use crying over spilt milk, as my mother would say,’ declares Diana, smiling at the women, trying to make up for Rachel’s outburst.

Irritated, Rachel hacks at a chocolate muffin with her teaspoon, setting the portions in front of the children, who fall on it like hungry lion cubs.

Diana sips her coffee and wrinkles her nose. ‘Too hot,’ she complains.

Rachel remains silent, but can feel her annoyance increasing by the second. Most people could make comments like this, but with her mother the negativity is suffocating. Rachel can’t remember the last time Diana paid a compliment. She takes a sip of her own coffee, burning the roof of her mouth, but refusing to acknowledge it.

‘I tell you what you should do,’ says her mother without any small talk, ‘you should bring the children over one day and treat yourself to a trip to the hairdresser’s’

‘Why? What’s wrong with my hair?’ says Rachel immediately offended.

‘Nothing, darling, nothing. It just looks as if it could do with a cut. You could make a day of it. Go to Bluewater, have some lunch and get yourself some new clothes.’ This body blow is dealt with a quizzical look at Rachel’s baggy grey jumper.

‘Look, Mum, I know you’re trying to be nice, but you sound like you’re criticising me.’